1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to systems for improving communication among people who are collaborating in the performance of a task.
2. Description of Related Art
Computers coupled to networks have made collaborative work easier than ever before. At the most fundamental level, file sharing and email have eliminated the requirement that collaborators be in physical proximity to each other. The change tracking arrangements that are provided by most document processing systems further support collaborative work, as do computer-implemented scheduling and tracking systems. Integrated systems for collaborative work provide features such as file sharing, email, change tracking, scheduling, and tracking in a single package. A problem with these tools and integrated systems for collaborative work is that they are very general. It is up to the user to adapt them to his or her needs. To be sure, a skilled user of a tool such as a spreadsheet can adapt the tool to almost any purpose, but to do this, extensive programming is required. Such programming requires a specialist, and the result of the programming is often opaque to those who are not masters of the tool and of what is being represented. Indeed, a general problem with tools that require extensive programming to adapt them to a user's needs is that the programming is usually done by a specialist who understand the tools or the system, but not the nature of the collaboration, and as is usual in such situations, communication between the programming specialist and the users is usually difficult and sometimes impossible.
Another approach to collaborative work has been systems that are specialized for collaborative work in a particular special area, such as bookkeeping. For example, the Quickbooks small business accounting software provides a model of a small business as seen from the point of view of an accountant that the user of Quickbooks can customize for his or her own purposes. While the model of the small business that Quickbooks provides is very useful for accounting, it has no relevance whatever to other aspects of the business.
Another approach is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/765,424 ('424 application). FIG. 34 shows a diagram of a model 4101 as described in the '424 application. A number of collaborators 4005 (1 . . . n) are organized into one or more collaborator groups 4003 (1 . . . m). A collaborator 4005 may belong to more than one group 4003. The context in which the collaborators 4005 work is represented by a domain hierarchies 4009 (1 . . . k), goal-project hierarchies 4011 (1 . . . m), and initiative hierarchies 4109 (1 . . . o).
Each goal-project hierarchy 4011 has at its head a project or a goal. A goal may have other goals and projects 4015 as its children. A project 4015 may have other projects as its children, but may not have a goal as a child. Any goal, project, domain, or initiative may have one or more items of information 4017 associated with it, as indicated by arrows 4105. The information may include documents, messages, discussions, reminders, Web links, and alerts. The ability to relate information 4017 directly to any kind of hierarchy entity is particularly useful when the information is global to the entire domain or initiative.
An initiative 4109 is not a member of any domain hierarchy 4010 or goal-project hierarchy 4011, but is rather the root of an initiative hierarchy 4111 which may include sub-initiatives and a single level of goals and/or projects from any of the goal-project hierarchies. A goal or project may belong to any number of initiatives. Information may be related to an initiative in the same way that it may be related to any hierarchy entity.
Access to domains, goals, and projects is by collaborator groups 4003. A given collaborator group 4003(i) may have access to any combination of domains, goals, projects, and initiatives in model 4101. The kinds of access which a collaborator belonging to a particular group has to a particular domain, goal, project, or initiative depend on the group's group type and the permissions which the group has for the particular domain, goal, project, or initiative.
Collaborators with the proper permissions may modify not only the information 4017 associated with a goal, project, domain, or initiative, but may also modify the form of the respective hierarchy.
A limitation of the model 4101 is that it provides only one view of the hierarchies' structure. This limits the usefulness of the model to more complex processes or organizations, where multiple views of the hierarchies would be helpful.
It is thus an object of the present invention to overcome these limitations and to provide an improved system for collaborative work.